Aortic or Lower Extremity Vascular Surgery

Group of procedures performed by surgeons with similar skills–open surgical procedure on the largest artery of the body (aorta), or one of its major branches, to remove blockage or replace the artery with an artificial vessel; or an open surgical procedure to bypass diseased arteries in the leg and restore blood flow; or replacing the diseased largest artery (aorta) of the body with an artificial replacement that is introduced through a tube passed into a leg artery; or treatment of an artery blockage in lower extremity by placement of a long tube into the area of disease and opening the area of blockage without a traditional open operation.

Find the best surgeons — Checkbook has identified as having better-than-average outcomes based on analysis of more than four million surgeries done for hospital inpatients by more than 50,000 surgeons.

How Big Are the Differences

Some surgeons' patients have much higher rates of deaths and other bad outcomes than other surgeons'. This shows the percentage of bad outcomes for the best-performing one-tenth of surgeons, the average surgeon, and the worst performing one-tenth of surgeons.